Hey everyone, I stopped playing during PoP era and I came back a couple months ago. I have a good feeling about the classes but miss a dozen of expansion pack so I have a general question about nukers. I tried not to turn this thread into a DPS war. That's not the meaning of it at all. I was just wondering how does the wizard "catch up" to have his/her dps on par with mage (who has the extra DoT pet) in a raid configuration. They used to have bigger nukes back then with more damage types so they could adapt against any raid target. They also had that lure (with lower resist rate) line of nukes but with lower dps rate, IIRC. So more flexibility and higher nukers, overall. How is it today ? - Do they still have bigger nukes ? - Do they have some AA's mages don't to improve their DPS (mana burn ?) - Better mana efficiency (so they can nuke longer) ? - How does the mage pet perform during raids ? Does it die often or is it relatively safe ? - I've seen some Wiz nukes with higher damage but with a reload time. Do you have to "twist" nukes nowadays ? - My wizard is 57 and it takes like 10+ nukes to kill a blue mob (with a J1 tank merc smashing around). It seems like a lot for a pure DPS class. Does it stay so ? I think the level 50ish range is quite lacking in terms of spell improvements. Just trying to figure out which one I'm going to play. I really am into bigger numbers/nukes so I'm leaning toward wizards even though they don't shine as much today, from what I read. I'm already aware of the differences in terms of utility (ports/evac vs CoH/pet stuff/resist debuff/DS/...) Thanks
In the meantime, I made some Excel analysis with rough data of the highest spells and it answered some of my questions. WIZ "pro's" : - Higher negative resist mod or the same as Mage depending on the spells. All of them have a negative mod unlike MAG's - Cold damage nuke available to them with extra resist debuff on board - Slightly higher nuke peak - Much higher PB AE (but lower Targeted AE) The Damage per Mana looks about the same. However, the Mage seems to have higher DPS on their nukes (lol ?), the highest dealing 32.586 with a 1,5 casting time... Maybe because they have less available time to nuke than Wiz ? All spells have a recast time of 4+ seconds so some twisting is indeed required. As for the AA's, I ain't not sure yet which big differences there is.
First: http://dps.kizant.net You can set up spell weaves for mages and wizards and compare yourself. If you substitute the 3 letter abbreviation for a recent expansion, you can "go back in time" to check out what it was like in ToV, TBL, etc. It's hard to figure out what you are trying to do. You're talking about raid performance yet are level 57. Are you on a TLP server? In which case, you can ignore the rest of this cause ... I don't really know about the state on pre-House of Thule stuff as there have been enough changes in aa lines from when I went through the older stuff that I don't trust my memory. In modern EQ, mages and wizards are fairly equivalent in raid dps. RIght now, pet dps is limited (pets are limited by the number of hits they get) on modern raids so what you would think on paper happens, doesn't. Actual raid performance greatly depends upon group adps makeup and the number of proc augs the character has. I can tell you as a wizard with all my procs that I generally outperform our mages on the total nightly parse, but event to event can vary greatly. I suspect in CoV, it might trend the other way due to the heavy mana drains ... but we'll see what the final shape of the events are starting this Thursday. The most important thing about both on raids is direct damage as a game damage type is well behind damage over time and melee striking. So both classes are inferior as dps types in raid formats. But you cannot have 30 necros in a raid ... and there aren't that many druids in existence ...
Thanks, Cragzop. I forgot indeed to mention that I play on regular servers, not TLP. So level 115 content indeed. What you said gave me a good feeling about both classes. So both are mostly nuke based and the mage pet is negligible in raids. I'll try my luck with the wizard, then.
I'd welcome more wizards, especially raiding mains, in EQ. However, you should really consider the fact that wizards aren't very fun in the end game outside of raids unless you have a group (either guildmates, friends, or boxing). Not saying don't wizard, but you really want to be sure you are either going to box or have groups outside of raids. It's the big advantage mages have over wizards in the total EQ game. Pop a merc, and mages are pretty much a group.
Mages have the biggest nukes. Wizards have some nice AAs that mages don't have but it's not enough to make a difference. Mages have basically infinite mana. In ToV mage pets are immune to most things and they do good DPS unless there's a ton of raid lag. Without lag they'll win by a lot and with lag you might only lose by a little. Sometimes. Yeah, you don't just cast Ice Comet over and over anymore. Claw is the most important spell since it has a chance to proc twincast. It gets much much worse. At full burn you can kill a couple mobs pretty quick and then it starts taking forever. I have a video here that shows that pretty well: They can just spam one of their beams and outdo anything a Wizard can come up with using 5+ different AEs.
I get that you're understandably jaded, but a lot of what you wrote is misleading or exaggerated. This part particularly hit home, because "a ton of raid lag" has been the norm for the better part of a decade for pets in raids. That people thought Mages got serious upgrades on Beta because pets actually performed there is indicative of how abnormal pets doing good DPS actually is on live. We're actually at the point where pets (and mercs) are not swinging in static zones that have too many players. That said, Mages are definitely in a better place than Wizards, but that's largely because Wizards are in a bad spot compared to every other DPS class. That will be exacerbated once melee get new weapons/gear.
Isn't that true for any class? Use burns and discs, a couple die pretty fast. Then it takes longer to kill under basic situations?
Why am I playing a wizard on a TLP? This forum is filled with posts that for vast stretches our damage is middling and I have to find a bunch of melee proc augs to do damage? This is stupid. I'm stupid.
